


The Price of Polo Shirts

by thesnicken



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Drabble, One Shot, blue and ronan do not have the strength to handle gansey topless, but who does i mean really, idk what to say i wrote this on a caffeine high
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 17:59:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6530257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesnicken/pseuds/thesnicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Blue and Ronan bond at Gansey's expense by throwing his polo shirts out the window to combat their boredom and hopefully make Gansey see the light in regards to his terrible wardrobe. This plan backfires.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price of Polo Shirts

**Author's Note:**

> Wow this is dumb but I wrote it while I was reading the second book in the series and now I just want to think about this and not trk coming out in two weeks. 
> 
> You can follow me on tumblr if you like http://richardgaynseylll.tumblr.com/

"Do you want to help me throw Gansey’s polo shirts out the window?”

“Fuck yes.”

Blue didn’t think she had ever seen Ronan move so fast, at least not in response to her. He was out of his room and half way to Gansey’s wardrobe before she had moved from his doorframe. Blue chased after him, catching up before he had the chance to tear through the clothes, she wasn’t letting Ronan take all the good ones. 

“What’s inspired this, then?” He asked. “What’s Dick done to deserve such cruel treatment of his shirts?”

“Nothing in particular, I’m just bored,” she told him with a shrug. “Also he was wearing a lilac polo yesterday and honestly, enough is enough.”

“Agreed.”

She should have been better prepared for what they found behind the wooden doors of the wardrobe but somehow she was not; polo shirts representing all spectrums of the rainbow were hanging up, arranged by colour from yellow to green with the shades of black and white at the end. Below the shirts were two neat piles of cargo shorts. There was nothing else in the wardrobe.

“These are seriously all he owns? He’s like a cartoon character.”

“In his summer wardrobe, yeah. When we go back to school someone will arrive with boxes of cashmere sweaters, tweed jackets, long itchy socks-y’know the ones, with the ugly patterns on them?”

“I can picture them.”

“The polo shirts will remain, of course. In Ganseyland they’re fashionable all year round. But most of the cargo shorts will leave.”

“My god, we have to help this boy.”

“For our sakes, as well as his.”

And with that they began pulling them off their hangers. It was with a strange amount of delicacy that they did so considering what their intentions with the shirts were. They were all so neatly organised, it seemed wrong to destroy the gradual shaded order of them. If they were going to throw them out the window, the least they could do was make sure they did so in a pretty pattern.  

“I should have put my sunglasses on to do this,” Ronan remarked, holding up a particularly assaulting orange number.

“Maybe we should burn that one instead?” Ronan nodded in approval.

It took longer than she had anticipated to complete the task, partly because of the care they were taking and partly because Gansey had  _ so many _ damn shirts. They managed it somehow, each of them took a pile; Ronan carried the yellows, oranges, reds, and pinks; Blue took the greens, blues, and purples. 

Noah appeared next to them and looked at the remaining pile of whites, blacks, and greys.

“Do you guys need help?” He asked.

“Go for it,” Ronan said, heading for the window. 

Noah picked up the colourless pile that matched his face and happily followed with Blue. Ronan was hanging out the window in his room, looking down at the lot bellow. 

“See that?” He moved to the side for Blue to look down at what he was pointing at. There was a spectacularly large and brown puddle a few feet from his BMW. “That’s our target.” 

He picked a lime green shirt off her pile and tested it out, pulling his arm back then hauling it forward with skill, releasing the shirt into the air. Blue watched it whiz through the air and turn from green to brown as it landed right in the target. 

“Bullseye.” 

Blue dropped the shirts, suddenly caring little about being gentle with them after seeing the beauty of the muddy mess Ronan had so artfully created downstairs. She grabbed a burgundy shirt and tried to copy his action, drawing her arm back then forward. It flew out the window, floated for a moment then fluttered down, landing almost directly below them, way off from the target.

“Dammit.” She said, sadly. 

“It’s cool. You just need to work on your throw.” Blue was taken aback by his support. “Look, like this.” 

He threw another one that landed on top of his first. She watched him closely as he did it, trying to memorise his movement. 

“Can I have a shot?” Noah asked like they were the older kids in the park and he was a boy who wanted a turn on the swings. 

They both moved out of the way for him. He seemed to get to excited and forgot to put down his pile so he threw them all out at once. They fell with a lifeless thud. 

“Oh.” He sighed, then he vanished.

“It’s okay, Noah. You can throw some of mine,” Blue said, but he didn’t return. 

Ronan shrugged and threw another, this one went a bit too far, landing on the roof of his car instead. He swore then looked at Blue.   
“You want me to show you how to throw?”

She tried to contain her delight as she accepted his offer at help.  _ Help from Ronan! _ That was something new.

“Okay, what do I do?”

“Start by getting a shirt.” She did as she was told, going for mustard number this time. “Alright, you’ve got the first part sort of right, it’s when you bring your arm forward that you screw up, your arm goes too slack.” She took on his direction and tightened her arm. It didn’t go any better.

“Alright, that was _too_ tight,” he said. 

They tried again, him directing and moving her arm until she got it right. When she hit the puddle for the first time, she showed far more glee than she had ever wished to express in front of him. Remarkably, he returned her excitement, offering her a high five. 

For some time, they kept at it, creating their very own rainbow without water or sun. Some of the shirts hit the puddle, others ended up on the car or just landed in a sad heap on the gravel. They laughed with each shirt they threw, growing more ecstatic with each one. Blue managed to convince Ronan to put one of the shirts on, a monstrosity the colour of watermelon. 

“I’m only wearing it if you swear to never tell a soul that I so much as touched something this colour,” he said. 

“Fine.”

“Also, you have to put a pair of Gansey’s boat shoes on.”

Blue wailed loudly but she was prepared to sacrifice her dignity for this, that was how much it meant to her to see Ronan in the shirt. 

“I’m not going to be able to throw in these shoes,” she said looking at her feet and thinking there was probably nothing in the world she would hate to wear more than these, especially when they were at least seven sizes too big for her. “I can’t be steady in these clown shoes.”

“That’s fine, you couldn’t throw to begin with,” Ronan laughed as he pulled off his tank and replaced it with the polo shirt.  Blue snorted loudly. 

“I don’t even want to imagine what I look like right now,” he groaned.

“Wow, I can’t believe I’m saying this but watermelon is really your colour,” she lied.

Their aim got a whole lot worse after that; as Blue had predicted, the shoes were too slippy and big, and the shirt was too tight around Ronan’s arms for him to swing properly. They gave up on trying to hit the puddle, it was too full to get them muddy anyway. If they landed there, they just landed on top of a heap of bright shirts and remained nice and clean. Instead they just chucked them anywhere. 

“This could be some modern art piece,” Blue said. “Someone would buy this for thousands and put it in a gallery. They would say it’s a criticism on the dirty nature of consumerism and wealth. Or that it is a comment on our need for colour and individuality. We all seek to be unique but at the end of the day, we’re all just the same polo shirt, the same shade of mud.”

“Is that what we’re going to tell Gansey when he sees this? That it’s all just in the name of art.”

As a matter of fact, Blue hadn’t actually thought about how she would explain this to him. She wasn’t Ronan, she couldn’t just commit a chaotic act and get away with it. Maybe she  _ could _ , but she’d feel bad about it. At least a little bit.

“I’ll take the blame, if you want,” he said, apparently able to read her thoughts. Great, another psychic in her life. 

“Nah, I’m not letting you get all the credit. It was  _ my _ idea.”  

It felt wrong to let him take the blame when they were sort of bonding for the first real time. And the thought of taking responsibility for an act of anarchy such as this was kind of thrilling. She was beginning to understand Ronan’s impulsive behaviour a bit better now. 

They heard the Camaro long before it drew into the lot which gave them enough time to prepare for Gansey’s return. That is to say, they had enough time to flail around, throw away the remaining shirts and run downstairs with no idea of what they were going to say to him. 

They hovered just out of sight as he got out of the Pig, giggling as they awaited his reaction. He looked around with mild amazement, not appearing to fully realise that these were in fact _his_ shirts scattered about. Then he walked around the BMW to see the puddle. He crouched next to it like an archaeologist who knew he had found something of significance but wasn’t entirely sure what it was. 

Ronan let out a particularly loud and vicious snort and Gansey looked over to where they were hidden. Blue punched Ronan’s arm, probably doing more damage to her hand than his bicep, but she managed to push him into the open as he doubled over laughing. 

“What’s going on?” Gansey asked. Ronan just kept laughing, Blue joined him. They both doubled over, leaning on each other for support as they laughed until they got stitches. 

Eventually they calmed down enough to assess Gansey’s reaction. He wasn’t angry, instead he was nervously smiling like when someone didn’t understand an inside joke but laughed along anyway. 

“What’s going on?” He repeated. 

“It was Noah.” Ronan said.

“Was not!” Noah cried as he reappeared behind Gansey. 

“Did you two…” Gansey paused, trying to decide which of the many questions he had to ask first. Then he stared at Ronan and his eyes squinted. “Are you wearing my shirt?”

Ronan’s maniacal smile was rapidly wiped off his face as he remembered what he was wearing. He tore off the watermelon shirt and slammed it down on the ground, then he folded his arms over his chest and scowled to reinstate his masculinity. Blue started laughing again. 

Gansey kept staring at Ronan, then his eyes moved to Blue, his gaze drawn down. 

“Are those my shoes?”

Blue’s face changed as quickly as Ronan’s had as she kicked the shoes off. The second one flew with enough force off her foot that it hit Noah in the face, causing him to quickly disappear. She winced on his behalf. 

Gansey looked at the spot where Noah had been a moment before, then at the shirts in the puddle, then back at Blue and Ronan. He asked his next question.

“Why did you throw my shirts out the window?”

“For art,” said Ronan. 

Gansey stood up, rather unfazed by the whole thing. He didn’t seem to really care about an answer to his last question.

“I suppose I better go get a trash bag then.”

“What? You’re just going to put them in the trash?”

“Of course not,” he said, slowly. He looked at her with a face that very clearly showed that was exactly what he had intended to do before she had protested the notion. “I’m going to do, uh, the other thing.”

He frowned as he tried to work what that other thing could be.

“Wash them?” Blue suggested.

“Exactly, Jane!” He exclaimed with a point to her. 

“I thought the whole point was to make him get rid of them,” Ronan whispered.

“It was, but…”

But now she was looking at hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars worth of polo shirts on the ground and she couldn’t handle the thought of all that money being thrown away, especially when Gansey would probably just buy new and uglier ones. 

They helped him pick up the shirts in silence. There was nothing to suggest sadness, anger, or annoyance in Gansey’s face or posture. He looked just fine. Ronan kept glancing at Blue, clearly uncomfortable with this reaction. 

“He’s plotting something,” he whispered to her. “I can see it in his face.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Blue thought he was probably right, but she wouldn’t admit it. What sort of punishment for wrecking his shirts could Gansey possibly be planning? She didn’t want to find out. 

* * *

“One of your boys is one the phone, Blue!” Calla called from downstairs.

“Is it Gansey?”

“No, the other one.”

“Adam?”

“The other, other one.”

Blue cautiously went downstairs and took the phone, slightly terrified by the notion that Ronan was calling her.    
“Hello?” She said, gently, holding the phone away from her face like it might bite her. 

“Blue, we have a problem. A Gansey problem.” His voice was hard but there was a level of anxiety to it. 

“What’s happened? Is he okay?” 

“Just get over here.”

She made her way to Monmouth Manufacturing as quickly as her bike would allow. She banged at the door until Ronan opened it at pulled her inside. He swept her into the centre of the room, his eyes wide.

“Ronan, what’s happened?”

Ronan just gestured to something behind her. She turned to see Gansey working at his desk. He looked perfectly happy, busying himself with some maps, his hair in disarray. He wore his glasses and cargo shorts and nothing else. No polo shirt, no clothing of any kind covered his chest.

Blue stared. Every line, every crevice stood out, demanded attention that Blue was only too happy to give. She wasn’t usually that drawn to muscles, she didn’t see the appeal of them. But he had just the right amount of tone to suit him, enough to be impressive but not so much that it distracted from his face. _Of course_ , he was toned, of course he had the body of an adolescent god, why wouldn't he? But she had never looked beyond whatever monstrosity was covering his chest to consider what lay beneath, now she would never stop considering it.  She continued to stare in agony. He had a mole on his left hip, another one over his stomach that drew her attention to the soft brown trail of hair that wandered down from his belly button. 

She didn’t manage to draw her eyes away as she asked Ronan:

“Is this the emergency? That Gansey is topless.”

“Pretty much.”

Blue nodded. It  _ was _ a pretty big emergency. 

“You haven’t seem him topless before?”

“Sure I have,” Ronan said. “Just not for so long and I usually look away. You’re not supposed to look directly at the sun and all that.” 

“So why did you invite me over? You wanted to share this with me? How thoughtful.”

“I wanted to share it, but not out of kindness. This is our punishment.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have no shirts to wear,” Gansey said and Blue realised with complete horror that their voices hadn’t been as low as she had thought; he had heard their conversation. “You threw them all out.”

“You _ really  _ have nothing else?” Blue asked. 

“Oh, he does. He just wants to make us suffer.” 

Gansey looked up from his map and winked. Blue hated herself for swooning a little.

“I thought you didn’t like my shirts. Is this not an improvement?” He gestured down to his torso.

It was an improvement, certainly, but the most painful kind possible. 

“They’re all at the drycleaners. Then when they come back, I’m donating them,” he continued.

“Donating them?”

“Yeah, to charity and stuff,” he said with a lose wave of his hand.

“His shoes are going too, apparently,” Ronan added. 

“Judging by the way you kicked them at Noah, I’m guessing you’re not a fan of them either. Also you tell me you hate them pretty much every day.”

"At least the message is finally sinking in," Blue said. 

“He refused to put shoes on when he went outside earlier. He stood on a stone, it’s still stuck in his foot,” Ronan told her.

“Gansey, you need to get that stone out before it closes up and gets infected!”

He wasn’t listening to her.

“I’m thinking I should donate the shoes in honour of Noah, considering the faceful of them he got. Do you think there’s any ghost based charities? Maybe I could start one.  _ The Foundation for the protection of ghosts against the throwing of shoes by feisty young women.  _ It would need a snappier name than that, of course.” 

“What are you going to wear instead?”

Gansey shrugged.

“It’s warm enough to not wear a shirt. And maybe not wearing shoes will be good for me, help strengthen my soles.”

He turned around and stretched, causing light to cascade off his back muscles. Ronan groaned loudly.

“I’m too gay for this shit,” he sighed and slouched off to his room leaving Blue alone with this dumb Greek God of a boy.  
Somewhere in the distance, she heard Noah laughing. 


End file.
